Officially, the Rook departed from the Sentinels as a result of an amicable mutual decision that his talents were best used elsewhere. The amicable mutual decision actually consisted of him screaming "I quit! I quit your stupid team! Now let me at that refugee from a mad scientist convention!" while Princess tried to calm him down and stop him from punching Victor again, in the wake of the decision to use the Preserver Stones to exile Collapsar from this reality instead of simply destroying the star-snuffing monster, as the Rook would have preferred. The trip back to Earth was a rather frosty one, in many respects.

In reality, though, the seeds of the Rook's departure were sewn when he and Daedelus had a rather long talk during the quest for the stones, about the activities of Majestic Twenty and GENOCIDE, two conspiracies that the Rook had spent a great deal of time trying to extirpate. While Daedelus agreed that they were a threat, he pointed out that the alien hunters and anti-super-activists were actually just small facets of a much larger conspiracy. He revealed the existence of the Labyrinth to the Rook, explaining how most agencies such as SHADOW and VIPER were dependant on the Labyrinth for financial support.

On returning to Earth, the Rook discovered that his own family fortune was tied to the Labyrinth, as his parents had worked for many of its front companies and he'd sold his interest in the search engine he'd developed to yet another one! Daedelus had expressed a belief that the Labyrinth might be too entrenched in the Western financial system to be destroyed without causing massive economic chaos, and the Rook was seeing evidence that this terribly pessimistic view of matters might be correct. But that just made him even more determined to destroy this conspiracy against all that was good and true in the world, and so the Rook became the enemy of the Labyrinth.

While obsessed, the Rook is not unreasonable, and he knows that he cannot achieve his goals without assistance. As such, he has decided to recruit some back-up now that he can no longer rely on the Sentinels for assistance. (At least, that's how he sees things.) His first aide de camp is Anton Ramsey, a former AEGIS Active Response Team member who was discharged for striking a superior officer. (The superior officer had been sexually harassing another member of the team.)

The Rook hired Ramsey as a bodyguard for his secret identity and proceeded to test his loyalty in various ways for several months, before revealing his secret and inviting Ramsey to work alongside him. Ramsey believes that his employer is not quite sane, but respects his conviction and will go to the wall for him nonetheless. He uses the alias Stotan, after a training program he took part in during his high school years. Generally, when he takes the field it's with the purpose of extricating the Rook from whatever situation his employer has gotten himself into, and he doesn't engage in independent crime-fighting.

The Rook has also upgraded his arsenal, using AEGIS-style armorweave as the basis of his costume instead of spandex and leather. He maintains ties with Maximilian Mars, who's shared his knowledge of another conspiracy, known as the Initiative. Neither of them is certain how this organization ties into the larger picture of the Labyrinth, and the Rook increasingly suspects that it might be independent of it, and a potential threat that he might leverage against the older conspiracy. Just what he's going to have to do to bring about the end of these predators sometimes keeps him from sleeping easily, no matter how weary his battles leave him ...

It's kinda sad to see Rook fall down the "Conspiracies!" hole,but at least part of him realizes he needs help....

On an odd note i think Victor's plan for Collapsar(Exile him to a hopefully already dead Reality) was probably the better choice, as their had been enough Blood spilt already...

Unfortunate yes, but I like to think his efforts against primarily MJ-12 and GENOCIDE were serve as a small but surprisingly important step towards mankind eventually creating the Galactic Confederation.

In the end, it came down to a vote. Some of them, like most of the Star Raiders and the Rook, voted to use the Stones power to destroy Collapsar once and for all. Some of them, like Daedelus, abstained. But it was clear by the time that the vote rolled around to Victor that the majority of those present were in favor of just exiling Collapsar and its herald to another reality. So when they asked him what he chose, it was in the way of just observing the formalities.

And he said, "I vote for exile. Not that it matters, since I set that in motion as soon as we started talking about it."

The Rook expressed his displeasure with this revelation rather directly, and the rest of the Sentinels weren't all that happy with him either. For his part, Victor believes that this was the great threat he was shown by the Sands of Time, and believed that there was a good chance that whoever actually gave the command to the Preserver Stones would have to make a personal sacrifice -- likely their own life -- in exchange for it to function correctly. He was wrong in general, but right in that he did end up sacrificing the trust of most of his team.

Afterwards, however, Johnny Rocket spoke to him on the flight back to the Solar System. While Johnny also disagreed with what he'd done, even after Victor explained his reasoning, the chairperson of the Freedom League also recognized that his team needed someone who could act that decisively when necessary, and someone who could serve as an extremely effective field commander. Stunned to be offered membership in the Freedom League's core team at all, let alone under these circumstances, Victor agreed.

So Victor has relocated from Emerald City to Freedom City, operating out of a set of offices in Pyramid Plaza. He's also discovered that he's the beneficiary of much of the accumulated wealth of the now-dissolved Vanguard, as well as a collection of technological and mystical artifacts whose uses he's still exploring. (Another chunk of the above went to Sebastian Gregory, aka Savant, whom Victor has recently met for the first time.)

Studying this development, and learning about the tactical applications of the various members of the Freedom League, has consumed most of Victor's time over the past half of a year, but he has managed to get in a bit of crimefighting as well. There's also the relationship he seems to have stumbled into. He'd been aware of his own attraction to Ultramarine for quite some time, but believed that it was one-sided and unlikely to be reciprocated, especially after his actions at the Orrery. Learning that it was, and that Ultramarine was female, were both quite serious shocks to his worldview ...

While i'm sad at how Victor left the Sentinels,i can honestly understand why he voted the way he did.I also like the Burdgeoning Relationship between him&Ultramarine(don't think it'll work out,as it's long distance,but still).Sorry to hear 'bout Vanguard's Disallusion....

A long time ago, in a star system far far away ... the Heralds ruled their star kingdom justly and well. And yet one of them, the Herald of Despair and Sorrow, was unsatisfied with her lot. Her power was only to be used to banish despair and sorrow, to help people work through such emotions, not to spread them or revel in them, and so she came to envy those of her fellows who could freely use their powers. And eventually, her envy turned to hatred, and she began to study forbidden magic. So it was that she became an agent of the Lord of Bitter Laughter, one of the Nameless Ones, and worked against her fellows as the Herald of Despair and Torment. She claims that it was her influence that brought down the star kingdom, but she claims a great deal.

Like all the other Heralds, her essence was cast across the galaxy to be reborn on other worlds. Unlike all the other Heralds, her "rebirth" is a parasitic possession of a human form and transformation of that form into something resembling her original body. Where it takes decades for a Herald to be reborn when they fall, it takes her no more than a few weeks to resume her full power. On the other hand, the other Heralds can grow to become much more powerful than the Herald of Despair, as they bond with the spirits of their hosts while she suppresses hers.

Herald Sisyphus, as she's come to be known on Earth, was a persistent enemy of Herald Endymion and the Legendary Angels, allying with (and betraying) the Angels' other enemies as she pleased. They were never able to permanently defeat her, but they prevented her schemes to cause tragedies to the best of their abilities. Towards the end of Herald Endymion's life, the Legendary Angels regarded her as more of an annoyance than anything else, someone that they had beaten over and over again.

As with the downfall of the star kingdom, there is no proof for Herald Sisyphus' claim that she was the one who drove Herald Endymion to invade the Terminus, resulting in the death of the Herald of Love and Justice. If her plan was to make the other Legendary Angels fall into despair, it failed. They continued to pursue her, and were more ruthless in doing so than they'd ever been before. Five years after Herald Endymion's fall, Herald Sisyphus was captured and imprisoned in a magical barrier, occasionally released in order to have experiments performed on her in hopes of terminating her possession of the human form ... and sometimes because Herald Mentor felt like performing experiments.

Ten years later, however, the Lord of Bitter Laughter was summoned to Earth Prime and walked it freely for a full week. Almost unthinkingly, it momentarily enhanced Herald Sisyphus' powers and allowed her to break out of her confinement. Communing with her master, the Herald of Despair pledged her service anew, swearing to make this world a fit place for its return. For the next few years, she proved to be a serious foe to the Legendary Angels and also to Akazuchi Academy's Campus Defense Club, often thwarted but never captured.

The Campus Defense Club managed to exile her out of phase with the universe as part of their graduation exercises, and she has only recently been able to escape that fate. It turned out to be a mixed blessing, as she was able to hear her master's voice more clearly while separated from the world of matter, and now has a long term plan to cause great despair and suffering. Her alliance with the Lord of Vampires, Dracula, is a step towards the fulfillment of that plan, and she waits in Denver for the arrival of the other two members of her trinity -- one from Toronto, the other from Washington, D.C.

Together, they will darken the skies and make the world scream.
Herald Sisyphus -- PL 13

Generally assumed to be a Russian "clone" or "copy" of the Centurion, the truth of Protonik's origins is hidden in the massive amount of Russian classified files that have not been (and probably never will be) released to the West. His story begins in 1981, when Soviet researchers discovered a method of travelling to alternate realities. To their horror, the first one they found was a bizarre world where the Oktober Revolution had never taken place, and modern-day Russia was ruled over by a figure called the Czar -- whom they recognized as a counterpart of the Soviet Union's great defender, Bogatyr! (This may have done a great deal to destabilize these scientists beliefs in historical inevitability, to say nothing of its influence on the assassination of Bogatyr later that year.) This was the world dubbed Anti-Earth by Johnny Rocket when he first visited it, nearly two decades later.

If the scientists were appalled by what they found in this other Russia, what they found in its corresponding America was rather intriguing; it was ruled over by "the Praetor", who was quite obviously a counterpart to the Centurion, of their own world's America. But they were also familiar enough with the Man of Adamant's origins to realize that they meant the Praetor could not reasonably exist. The Centurion had been sent to Earth from another reality; were they supposed to believe that there were also multiple iterations of that world, as well as Earth? Utter nonsense! (Actually true, but they didn't know it.) Something must have happened to create this counterpart during the passage of the Centurion's life pod through the Terminus ... which suggested some a fascinating question: were there others?

It took the Russian team months of potentially deadly labor to find a "divergent" version of the Centurion's life pod that had yet to slip through a rift in the Terminus to an alternate Earth. Returning to their base with it, they then subjected it to a variety of exotic radiations in an attempt to crack it open, intending to use the mutated infant's genetic material as the basis for a new generation of Russian super-soldiers. Unexpectedly, when the pod finally did open up, it revealed a fully grown man with coal black hair and dark brown eyes.

His mind was that of an infant; however, he learned astonishingly quickly, and was discussing the theoretical underpinnings of his abilities and Marxist-Leninist philosophy within the week. His powers were different from Centurion's in many ways, and seemed -- at least initially -- to be greater. A thrilled commissariat dubbed him Protonik, the new leader of the People's Glorious Metahuman Defense Collective. (Or the People's Heroes, to use the less flowery term.) He served the state faithfully, saving many lives after the Chernobyl melt-down and exposing the activities of many enemy agents. In 1987, however, he was given an assignment that he didn't particularly relish -- challenging the Centurion, via a press conference, to a test of might on Kaiju Island.

The Centurion, it should be noted, was not in a particularly good mood. Wounded from last year's passage of the Moore Act, that left him essentially exiled from his home town, he accepted the challenge in hopes of working out his frustrations on the new Russian super. When he arrived on Kaiju Island, however, he was struck by the somber expression on Protonik's face. Before the fight was scheduled to begin, the younger man hesitantly raised a hand -- looking like nothing so much as one of Mark Leeds' students -- and asked if he could have a question answered. Puzzled, the Centurion nodded.

"Can you please explain to me how this melee is supposed to demonstrate the superiority of one of our respective systems of government, given that such matters do not actually seem to have had anything to do with our empowerment as individuals?"

The Centurion blinked, then sat down on a conveniently placed boulder. "Well, that's a very good question."

Geologists listening for seismic disturbances on the island were seriously perplexed when nothing happened. While the discussion that ensued was quite heated at times, nothing was raised except the participant's voices. They debated many apparently tangential issues, and also discussed their mutual origin. (Having met his canine counterpart from Ani-Earth, Centurion was intellectually prepared to accept Protonik as an alternative version of himself.) Ultimately, when Protonik received a radio transmission ordering him back to Russia, the two men parted as friends. The Centurion returned home in a much better state of mind; discussing the democratic system with Protonik had restored his own appreciation for its ideals, no matter how badly he'd been betrayed by their realities.

For his part, Protonik was pensive as he made his way home. When he was questioned as to why he had not fought, he answered that he hadn't felt any particular need to prove himself to Centurion, and wondered aloud why true believers in the inevitable victory of Communism -- as those around him certainly ought to be -- should feel so insecure about the West. This did not go over very well. Less than a year later, Protonik quietly defected to the United States. Believing that America was well-supplied with heroes, he spent the next several years doing farm work in Kansas. He was very happy.

Unfortunately, just as the Terminus Invasion began, another divergent copy of the Centurion -- one who had landed in Russia and risen to rule the Soviet Union during World War II -- arrived on Earth-Prime and attacked Protonik. The battle between Protonik and Neutronik (as the latter eventually dubbed himself) caused a great deal of damage and prevented Protonik from coming to the assistance of Freedom City until the invasion was over. Neutronik ultimately fled, and rather than cause panic about the possibility of an evil Centurion-level figure, Protonik chose to refuse to talk about the reasons for his absence during the invasion.

Unfortunately, Protonik's mysterious origins, ties to Russia and absence during the Terminus Invasion all made his activities somewhat suspect to a Freedom City still learning to trust its heroes again, as was did the fact that he was never invited to join the Freedom League. In order to deal with his frustrations, Protonik began spending time outside of Earth's atmosphere. During one of the first of these excursions, he encountered and defeated Firewing, and began to consider how to prevent future alien attacks.

After nine frustrating years, Protonik decided that he'd had enough, and left Freedom City, the United States and Earth itself behind. Since then, he's spent most of his time in space, contemplating the beauty of the cosmos and monitoring traffic through the solar system. He briefly returned to assist Earth's defenders during the Grue Invasion, but when Captain Thunder offered an apology and membership in the expanded Freedom League, Protonik curtly declined. "I have better things to do," he said, before soaring off once more.

He finally mended fences with the Captain and the rest of the League in 2007 during the Olympus Delendam Est episode, and revealed to them what those 'better things' were. Protonik has come to realize that, unlike the Centurion, he's not particularly long-lived -- in fact, what was done to him may have shortened his life expectancy by quite a bit. Already there are streaks of silver in his formerly coal-black hair, and Protonik has his doubts that, even absent enemy action, he'll live to see his fiftieth birthday, in 2031. He is determined, however, to do something of worth for humanity before his time is done.

So he's decided to terraform Mars.

He's spent the last decade studying how to go about it, learning from the best theoretical sources and discussing the science of planet-shaping with the scientific staff of visiting Lor starships. His efforts to assist with the interstellar refugee crisis have interrupted this plan, but have also allowed him to discuss his ideas with Daedelus. As of right now, he believes that he'll be ready to commence final operations in 2018. By the time humanity is ready and able to travel to Mars, they'll find it a suitable second homeworld. Hopefully they'll treat this one better than they did the first, but that's for generations yet to come.

It's almost like some writer somewhere had introduced him as a member of his current team and then had absolutely no idea what to do with him afterwards ...

Actually, it's exactly like that. Cripes this guy is boring.

I'm tempted to suggest the "Thank you, Green Lantern" complication from "The Greatest Story Never Told" episode of Justice League unlimited.
I'm not sure that it works, but anything would make this guy more interesting ;~)

I've never really been fond of any of the Sentinels with the exception of Princess.
I don't know why but I've always liked her, in spite of a very plain history. Maybe it's just because she's upbeat, fun, and sounds like the kind of superhero character you'd see in old comics. Or from a kid who wants to be a superhero.
And I like that.

She might have prepared for more than that, if she knew that, on the day of the proposal, Dolorosa jerked awake from a dreamless sleep with a startled cry on her lips ... and began considering leaving this world as soon as possible.